Help! My son doesn't want to fly

You might also be able to ask to fast-track through security. This can be quite a stressful/busy place too and any stress you can avoid will ultimately help as it is cummulative. 

Hi, Ok since you are planning to give it another go, I just wanted to mention some considerations- I think detail will matter a lot. What is it about the flying that causes anxiety? Can you minimise that? For example, would noise cancelling head phones help. What about lights on the plane? What distractions (music , audiobooks, videos, games etc) can you take? What seat would be better? Near window or aisle? Also it can be rather stressful when getting on and off the plane- can you maybe reach out to the airline to see if you can get on/off first or last? (or otherwise pick seats so that it will be easier to get on/off)? Maybe take some favourite food/snacks to have on plane? 

I don't form long-term memories of experiences if they are okay. So no amount of good experiences is useful in convincing me not to be scared of something. But one bad experience will still be fresh in my mind a year later. It's only once enough time has gone by that it feels like it happened to someone else that I can face the thing again.

Many thanks for all the responses. I had a reply all typed, but forgot to login, and lost it all, when I copied it, but then copied the password from my password manager :-(

I'll need time to digest all of the responses. For reasons, we can't leave our son here in the UK. Namely, there aren't many relatives we can call upon, as they live too far away, and most are of advanced age themselves. We've never really been apart as a family, so the idea of leaving our son with others, isn't something we're comfortable with. As my inlaws are also of advanced age, that was why we wanted to visit them.

I have heard of British Airways publishing a visual guide earlier this year for neurodiverse passengers, and I came across an ASD Youtuber who mentioned some non-prescription tablets you could take prior to flying to help you feel more docile, without the side effects of other medications.

But thanks again for your responses!

That's an interesting approach! Personally, the longer I leave something, the bigger of a mountain it seems. Like I didn't use public transport for more than 2 years after the start of the covid plague and it seemed scarier and scarier as the memories of doing it and being okay became more distant. 

That's interesting.

In order for a treatment to be effective there has to be an understanding about what the cause of the anxiety is. Making assumptions based upon what most people fear is not going to help if those assumptions are wrong.

Yes, and people don't understand aerodynamics. 

What worked for me with public transport was avoiding it completely for about a decade. Sometimes that works - if I don't do something for years and years I kind of forget I was scared of it and I can approach it fresh. It needs a really long period of avoiding the thing though.

Wait... people are scared of flying because they think the plane will crash? Not because they are worried about being trapped in a space with lots of other people and if they panic they might be physically assaulted or arrested or break down so badly that they never mentally recover? What is wrong with NTs? The plane crashing is the least bad outcome; you'd have like a minute of panic and never have another problem to deal with ever again.

Hi, this sounds like a difficult situation. I have anxieties about travelling and other things and I think it’s important to remember that how much we can cope with can change with time and depending on what else is going on. I feel much more able to tackle challenging situations when I am not too stressed out about other things. And there are some activities that at the moment I just decided are too much for me and not necessary. Though in future I might want to tackle some of these but only when I am in a calmer state and less overwhelmed by other things in life. I wouldn’t push it with the flying- you mentioned going on a shorter practice flight and that backfired- i think exposure can help if it’s the right time but it can also backfire and make the anxiety about it worse. It’s hard to predict and maybe he will never want to or be able to fly but maybe this may also change in future- so just because he cannot fly now doesn’t mean he can’t in future . I can actually do things now I never thought I could, other things I used to push myself to do but now feel unable to. 

In the meantime, maybe you can go visit family on your own? 

Just to build on what you said JuniperFromGallifrey about 20 years ago I took a 'fear of flying' course run by (I think) Virgin. It was at a conference centre near Heathrow. What I DIDN'T understand about other people before getting into that room, is that OTHER people didn't understand basic physics. All the course was, was explaining aerodynamics. I don't have a fear of *how* the plane stays in the sky, I understand that brilliantly, this is a phobia, like being afraid of spiders even though you know they can't hurt you. 

One woman on the course even said she flew from London to LA without standing up or peeing even once, because she thought if she walked along the plane, it would throw off the weight at one end and crash! I was in a conference room full of eejits. 

Anyway, 99% of the people on the course, at the end of the day, got in a plane and went for a flight and I just got to the airport and got on the tube home. *** that!

buy him some red bull, because red bull gives you wings!

I had anxiety about flying until 2 things happened. 1. A friend who was in the marines as an aeroplane mechanic told me they're a very simple structure: it's just gas and air. Understanding the science fixed a great deal of problems. But 2 The first time I flew business or a cut above economy with extras and small luxuries literally made it much more of an enjoyable experience - a step up from tolerable. 

Exposure is always about making small steps a lot of times, autistic or not. It sounds like your phone call experience shows that it was approached in the wrong way, not that exposure doesn't work on us. 

Like I've had issues with public transport, and the steps start with just going one stop or something really small. You wouldn't start with an hour long train journey (or however long flying to Ireland takes) because that's huge. 

Hello SAS, I hope you're well today. 

I also am autistic and flew happily with my family right up until probably 10/11 years old, when my anxieties began to make flying a real issue. This got progressively worse until I was about 16 when I completely put my foot down and said I'm never flying again. 

Since then, my family travel regularly without me and I have even spent a few years living abroad, but I would take a 28hr coach from the country I lived in back to London when I visited family. 

There are ways around it. You clearly can't leave your 13 year old on his own in the UK, but if you had a family friend who would put him up for a week or two, you could go away without him? Failing that, in just a few short years he will be safe to leave on his own while you fly off for your holidays. 

Ultimately it is his choice and you would probably be causing a huge amount of anxiety and stress if you chose to force him to do it, so it's probably best you don't. 

From a personal point of view, I have never found flying easy, so have only been to places that involved short flights.  

On the subject of never doing something again, there are some things my autistic son finds difficult which mean that there are some things we can no longer do as a family and my husband and I have done on our own. I agree with others that this may have to be the answer for now to see family.

I would agree with Nathan that exposure therapy does not work in the same way for autistic people. The theory relies on convincing the anxious brain that the experience isn't as bad as they feared it would be. If a situation is so overwhelming that it causes sensory overload and triggers meltdowns then that is going to add to the fears and make the anxiety worse. 

Despite that I would say there is hope. It's worth trying to talk through what specifically is the part of flying he finds intolerable and if there is anything that may counteract that (such as noise cancelling headphones).

The main problem is that if your son is to overcome these fears it really has to be something he wants to do. Being forced into another flight is likely to worsen the situation even further. Is there anything that he is interested in and really wants to do that could be incorporated into a trip? 

Flying/travel is not necessary and there is no reason why your son should do it if he doesn't want to.

How does him not flying prevent you both from never flying again? Does he require 24/7 care from you? Even if that's the case, surely one of you could go abroad while the other stays home.

sas said:

It would seem the issues he experienced with the Ireland flights, have made him even more anxious about flying long-haul.

I experience the same thing in that being pushed into doing something I don't want to do makes it much more difficult to do the same thing again. For example, being pushed to make phone calls when I was younger has meant that I now can't use a phone at all. I appreciate that most anxiety advice says the opposite, that exposure reduces anxiety, but I don't think it works that way for autistic people. Every experience of a difficult thing adds to the bad memories and associations until it becomes impossible.

sas said:

My wife and I are now depressed at the prospect of not ever flying again.

It isn't clear why your wife and you would be prevented fro ttavelling without him. If he cannot get over his fear then leave him with someone capable of looking after him and go yourselves. A little harsh but effective.

It may not be easy for him but it isn't worth you never seeing the rest of your family again.

In the short term you could get him a therapist with experience of autism and dealing with his fears and they may be able to get him to regulate better.

Then when boarding there are tablets you can get which effectively knock you out for take off so you don't get to experience it. If you can time their effectiveness then repeat before landing so he is becoming reponsive at the time of touch down.

You may need to check of these are legal to posess in Malaysia as I recall their customs policies are nearly as tight as Singapores.